Yangon, Myanmar — Ma Soe Soe Kyi’s skeletal frame is visible above her blanket; she is too weak to keep her eyes open. Her husband waves away the flies and looks on helplessly.

Kyi is HIV positive and finally getting help and medication from a private HIV clinic in Yangon, Myanmar. There are 60 patients here — the oldest is 70 years old, the youngest just three months. (more…)

Yangon – Myanmar has launched a month-long campaign to promote healthy diet and breastfeeding, vital for the development of the mother and her kids. (more…)

On the back of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd’s recent trip to Burma and his visit to a Medecins Sans Frontieres HIV/AIDS clinic in Rangoon, the Australian government announced its assistance had increased in the past year by $18.5 million and was on track to reach $50m by next financial year. (more…)

More than five million people in South and Southeast Asia will die from viral hepatitis over the next decade as experts warn of a rampant epidemic that has already taken more lives than malaria, dengue and HIV/AIDS combined in the past 10 years. (more…)

A month after an outbreak of deadly illness caused by a rare strain of E. coli killed 50 people in Germany and France, Burmese Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials have announced that they have discovered evidence of the bacteria in Burma. (more…)

Yangon– When Thida Win contracted HIV after selling her body on the Yangon streets, it was her fellow sex workers that she turned to, not Myanmar’s crumbling health service. (more…)

In Myanmar, progress is being made to reduce the rate of new HIV-AIDS infections after several years of a national program. But international sanctions on Myanmar are hampering efforts to curb the spread of the virus. (more…)

Details of healthcare professionals available to Burma’s estimated 200,000 prisoner population has exposed a grossly under-resourced sector, with one doctor available for every 8000 inmates. (more…)

In a sleepy, rural settlement in the far north of army-ruled Myanmar, farmer Tu Raw anxiously cuddles his young son and baby daughter, both coughing and feverish with the symptoms of malaria. (more…)

Rangoon — An unspecified number of Rangoon residents have been diagnosed with plague, a contagious disease primarily transmitted by rodents (mostly rats), according to the Burmese Ministry of Health (MOH) in Naypyidaw.
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Chiang Mai  –  More than 900 people in Rangoon Division were infected with dengue fever and six died in the first four months of this year, according to state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua and a well-placed source at the Burmese Medical Association in Rangoon. (more…)

Yangon — At least 230 people have died of heat stress in Myanmar’s second largest city of Mandalay during the weekend, as temperature recorded at 45 degree Celsius, the local daily quoted Mandalay municipal authorities as reporting Wednesday. (more…)

A serious shortage in use of contraception by gay and bisexual men in the Asia-Pacific region, coupled with criminalisation of the practice, is causing “alarming” rates of HIV. (more…)

Hong Kong – HIV prevalence among gay and bisexual men has hit alarming levels in Asia and most of them do not have access to services and care due to punitive laws which drive them underground, a U.N.-backed report said on Monday.
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Diarrhoea has hit Waw township in Myanmar’s Bago division-East amid water scarcity, the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday. (more…)

Chiang Mai – After more than two years since Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, the lack of drinking water continues to affect more than 180,000 residents of the Irrawaddy Delta region, according to the United Nation’s office in Rangoon. (more…)

Yangon – Myanmar official media Monday urged traditional medicine practitioners in the country to take part in the national health promotion plan, designed to give better healthcare to the people with traditional medicine. (more…)

New Delhi – The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has urged the international community to mount pressure on Burma’s ruling junta to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to resume visits to detention centres, where widespread torture and abuses have been reported. (more…)

Chiang Mai – Even as three teenagers and two children were found infected with the A(H1N1) virus, the total number of those afflicted rose to 19 in the Meala Burmese refugee camp, located along the Thai-Burma border. (more…)

New Delhi – The Burmese Ministry of Health has directed a network of voluntary groups, which are providing assistance to people living with HIV/AIDS, to register with the ministry. (more…)